One of the most staggering things over the past few days has been reading the Goonish lunacy emanating from the Ibrox fan media sites and some of their media lackeys. Take the village idiot, for example.
His meltdown is going to go down as one of the most absurd and over-the-top spectacles we’ve ever seen in Scottish football.
He and others contend that Scottish football is controlled by Celtic, which they believe is controlled by Peter Lawwell.
They claim we’ve somehow co-opted other clubs, bent the governing bodies to our will, and manipulated the system to our advantage. Yet, they’ve never managed to show a single piece of evidence proving this. Not one.
Oh, they make occasional noise over individual decisions, but they’ve never been able to demonstrate any sort of corrupt pattern, no matter how hard they’ve tried. And for some of those Ibrox fan media types, they’ve tried pretty hard—harder, in fact, to dig into Celtic than they’ve ever tried to get to the bottom of things at their own club. This obsession has only hurt them, time and time again, as they focus on the wrong concerns.
The simple fact is that every single one of their accusations in this regard is nonsensical. Brendan Rodgers, sitting in front of the media before the game, fired back at Philip Clement’s comments about money by pointing out that everything Celtic has achieved has been earned.
He was also referencing our success because we now stand at 119 trophies, every single one of them won fairly and squarely.
I defy anyone across the city to prove otherwise.
I know they find this hard to accept, but it’s a fact.
There’s no asterisk next to any of our titles. Whatever they tell themselves, we know—and they know—that they can’t say the same. Apart from the dark shadow cast over everything their old Ibrox club won prior to 2012, there’s the not insignificant matter of a decade of proven cheating, which went essentially unpunished by the same governing body they still claim operates against them.
This is the funniest part of it all.
We’re the ones with the legitimate grievances. On The Trinity Tims podcast the other night, I said that the only people with a real complaint are us because of Beaton.
Everyone knows what happened in that game, and we all know where Beaton’s loyalties lie. This isn’t the only example of one of their supporters officiating crucial matches, and it’s not the only time it’s backfired spectacularly.
Who remembers Brother Bobby Tait?
For the younger generation, let me give you some context. Tait’s pro-Ibrox sympathies were so well known that it was said he wore Rangers socks under his referee socks during their games. His decisions were notorious, like in the match at Tynecastle during Rangers’ ten-in-a-row season, where he disallowed two legitimate Celtic goals.
His finest hour came in his final match as a Grade One official: a game against Kilmarnock at Ibrox, which he specifically requested. It was the penultimate weekend of the title race in that campaign.
Tait understood the importance of an Ibrox victory that day. So much so that he added five minutes of injury time—long before boards were held up by fourth officials, back when such decisions were entirely at the referee’s discretion. But his efforts to help his favourite club spectacularly backfired when Kilmarnock scored a 95th-minute winner, leaving Celtic on the brink of the title.
I find it incredible to see so much wailing, whining, and baseless allegations of bias from a club that has benefitted from blatant favouritism time and again. Books have been written about the biases of the SFA. We know what went on during the EBT years.
We know the SFA helped cover it up and ensured no sanctions came Ibrox’s way.
A whole slew of their trophies will forever carry that stain. And this is before we even discuss refereeing decisions over the years—some of which, to borrow Tom English’s word, are inexplicable.
We’ve all seen the evidence.
We know their club once came close to breaking the European record for domestic league matches without conceding a penalty. The only team higher on that table? A Barcelona side under investigation for match-fixing.
For years, referees like Tait, Madden, Kenny Clark, Mike McCurry, and Hugh Dallas got away with murder. Celtic even hired private investigators to dig into the backgrounds of referees, so strong was our suspicion that things weren’t above board. Our club ate an awful lot of dirt for that at the time.
But when a club feels compelled to go to such extremes, maybe the club isn’t the problem.
We all know what’s gone on across the city and at Hampden over the years. There are tainted titles in Scottish football history, but none of them belong to Celtic. None of them are the result of anything our club did that it shouldn’t have done.
We’ve reached 119 trophies on one continuous timeline, with an unbroken history, and without the benefit of a sugar daddy.
I take enormous pride and satisfaction in knowing these things.
The screaming lunatics across the city cannot, in all honesty, say the same—and they know it.
If I were them, I wouldn’t be drawing too much attention to their own record. The allegations that they’ve been favoured by Hampden have a lot more supporting evidence than any that have ever been, or will ever be, levelled against us.
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There are lots of times that they got critical decisions in their favour over the years that I have supported Celtic, but the one sickening episode that sticks in my mind is in 2004 when after Seville, one of the greatest highlights of my life, but nevertheless gutted at the time by that result, we went to Kilmarnock to win the league title.
Well we all know what happened that day and despite Celtic doing everything correctly at Rugby Park we were still pipped to the title by the cheating goings on at Dunfermline as the home team lay down to the Huns. Chris Sutton, who is not prone to exaggeration called it right, we were cheated on that day. My abiding memories of that day though is of the Kilmarnock fans gleefully cheering every time the huns scored, and singing their lungs out when their team were 4-0 down. I mean who the fk ever does that? I also remember their goalkeeper ex-Celt, believe it or not and part of the hate fest, wasting time when his team were 4 down WTF? I left that ground seething that day full of bitterness and hatred.
That is partly why to this day that I give no Club or their fans credit or the benefit of the doubt in any of our dealings with them. We are very much on our own, always have been, we should depend on no one and we have to fight our corner accordingly at very juncture.
Sorry for the rant, it just developed and I couldn’t stop it. 🙁
Chris Sutton apologised unreservedly to Dunfermline after accusing them of “lying down”. (Google it) It was soon after he started to get jobs in the media.
Maybe it was an “Honest Mistake” ….
Good rant Johnny,I remember that time well, you’re right no team has ever helped Celtic,most are supported by people who if pushed on their allegensies are probably Hun.
That tynecastle game. It wasn’t only the disallowed goals. Tait added on almost 8 minutes of injury time when we were winnin 1- 0 and hearts equalized, with just about the last kick of the ball. Wim Jansen inquired where he got the injury time from and it went nowhere. Some years later, tate, obviously thinkin it was all in the past, so it was ok, claimed he ‘should never really have been in charge of a Celtic or rangers game’. A biased wee charlatan, who was a disgrace tae his so called profession. His cheatin came back and slapped him big time, with that kilmarnock game tho. And ah dont want tae get even started on mccurry. Who’s father, a minister, even managed tae bring derogatory ‘quips’ about Gerry Addams ffs, intae a christenin sermon i was at in the 90’s. In all probability because he was aware there were RC’s in his congregation that day. Bigoted tae the core.
Remember it well mate and we were told we were paranoid at the time but as it turned out we weren’t paranoid enough with what happened to them in the end.
Can you imagine any other Sky Sports commentator getting away with the Boyd rant, embarrassing doesn’t cover it. He shouldn’t have survived the rant against Griffiths a few years back.
Loving his pain though. Tearing shreds off rangers a few weeks back.
We have endure a lot of bad decisions past few decades and any complaint we have had is seen as sour grapes BUT not the KLAN.
They are masters at finding new lows, new levels of deep humiliation. Brings so much fun and joy to all other fans who don’t have a blue tint especially when it is shown up how bigoted some of our media chums are.
James, Bobby Tait, and John Beaton could only be described as amateurs when compared to the one and only John Robertson Proudfoot Gordon (JPR Gordon). The SFAs go to referee in the 1970s.
I was at the League game at Ibrox in January 1978 when JPR had his finest hour. Celtic had a free kick midway inside the Rangers half, the ball was flighted into the six-yard box where Joe Craig was waiting to nod the ball home, McKinnon smashes Craig in the back and then falls on top of him, the ball rolls harmlessly past the post. Celtic players surround JPR demanding a penalty, the press later described it as a ‘stick on penalty.’
JPR surrounded by Celtic players looks up and sees John Greig charging forward with the ball with only Roddy McDonald at the back for us.
JPR barges through the Celtic players with has arms held out indicating ‘play on’ with five rangers players racing towards our goal, where Greig finally has a tap in despite Roddy clearing the initial shot off the line.
Celtic fans spilled on to the park behind the goal, Jock Stein came on to the park to usher them back to the terraces.
Neilly Mochan had to prevent Celtic players from walking off the field of play, Neilly ordering the Celtic players to restart the match.
In the second half Celtic were denied another penalty when Alex McDonald handled the ball on the line before it was punted clear.
Months later JPR Gordon was forced to resign when it was proved that he took bribes in a match involving AC Milan and Levski Sofia
You play your King JPR Gordon, Big Wolf, I play my Ace, Mr R H Davidson, what a bigoted barsteward this guy was. In this era big Jock said, that to win games against the Ibrox mob, Celtic had to be at least 2 goals better than them, quite honestly I’m pretty sure that goes for every era since 1888.
For all its faults I think that VAR will change things for the better eventually, in my opinion Collum is a fair minded individual who will bring more fairness to Scottish refereeing, if given time? That might not happen if those at Ibrox get their way.
Chant for Tannadice on Sunday…
To the tune of one ‘Here we go’ that Aberdeen fans sang in The 1980’s –
One One Nine, One One Nine, One One Nine…
One One Nine, One One Nine, One One Ninnne…
One One Nine, One One Nine, One One Nine…
ONE – ONE – NINE !!!!!